I hope you’ve all had a marvelous festive season, have had at least one gift that wasn’t socks and have sufficiently experimented with the maximum capacities of your tummies.
I’ve spent mine, as is customary, avoiding my university work by engaging in – what I can only describe as borderline dangerous – amounts of baking for my family. And as I have no work to show for the past week of fun and festivities, I thought I’d practice my photography skills (or lack thereof) and make you all feel thoroughly sick with yet more cake.
Go on, you can fit in one more helping. It is the season, afterall.
The cake is a cheats Christmas cake made with my Nan’s leftover home made mincemeat, put together by myself and my Kitchen Bitch (my sister) who was on egg cracking and gathering duty. I candied bags and bags of nuts using various methods for my family to nibble on, but kept a few over to decorate. Then whacked on a slice of clementine and a cinnamon stick to keep my mum happy. That whole, rustic farmhouse deal is kind of her thing.
We got a bit over excited with the mix, ending up with enough to fill two cake tins instead of the intended one, so I knocked up a cinnamon glaze for one to make them a little differentiation between the two.
So here you go, feel better by knowing that, no matter how little work you have done, you have probably done more than me who, once again, has earned the title of Time Waster Extraordinaire.
Ah well, tis the season to be a giant waster. That’s a classic phrase right?
Do you know what you NEED to own? You NEED to own my graphic novel, Tick. This is not a suggestion or a request, it’s a fact.
I know this, because the internet told me so. The Internet, in all it’s all-knowing glory, has come down this Christmas time in the form of Comic Community site Broken Frontier, with the flattering news that my work has been included in their Top Ten List of the best indie comics of 2012.
How about THAT?
So why not just treat yourself this Christmas and check it out here. Consider it a treat for having survived the end of the world.
So, following on from the last post, I’ve been drawing inspirational ladies for an inspirational lady.
If you’d like to learn more about the achievements of some truly incredible people, or simply need an antidote to the head-in-palms inducing presentation of us double X chromosome owners available in magazine racks, check out this charming little ebook.
Men are pretty cool. They do things and make stuff and sometimes say things that make you think.
Some men are really awesome and make you appreciate things just by telling you what they think, and you stare and wish you had their knowledge in your head so you could think like that.
And, by the same token, some men are pretty lame. They destroy things or lie or do both and then pretend they haven’t. They get power hungry and selfish and manipulate a whole lot of people who don’t understand how small they are in comparison.
And there’s a whole load of women who are just as lame and just as corrupt and make choices that nobody else really likes, if they knew they had been made.
And then, by the same token, there are some really rad women. Women who also think differently and make you say things like “wow!”.
Women from the past like this lady:
Women from, the slightly more recent past like these ladies:
Women from all over time, like these ladies:
And Women who make totally rad things that look totally bad ass and help progress understandings, like this thing.
And some women do drawings of things for other women who really like cool women that have done stuff.
Did you know I was actually studying a Graphics course?
I ask, only because you would, under no uncertain terms, be forgiven for thinking I was an illustration student. I think it’s something to do with the total lack of organisation, adoration for comics and drawing…”things” and my total inability to draw straight lines.
And The fact that I’m not sure I’ve mentioned the word “grid” once since setting this site up over a year ago.
Well I am. It’s a mixed course admittedly, and there is certainly a heavy emphasis on image making and illustration too, but I wanted to, very quickly, dispel any myths that I am no good for anything but the world of the wibbly.
The current project is all about layout. And I’m finding it a challenge and a half. Here is the, incredibly ugly, induction timetable for first years to my University.
Yes we are actually an arts and design school. The irony is not lost on me.
See, this what happens when you leave all the admin to the Humanities Campus.
But I digress, we’re currently taking part in a series of short exercises in redesigning the above ugly thing, into something considerably less ugly using a set of strict restrictions and rules (One typeface only, one colour only 3 type size only etc). Just to clarify, this is by no means a practice of making something “beautiful” in the traditional sense. This is about creating order, making structure and making use of positive and negative space, type weight, type size and a hell of a lot of Swiss inspired graphical magic.
So, so far these are how I’ve gone about getting my Bauhaus on. Don’t worry about the text. This is about the overall effect of the page, the information itself is borderline irrelevant.
Mmmmm…delicious, gridded neatness.
I have a whole bunch of these, with tweaks here and changes there. Things most people wouldn’t notice in the slightest. It’s got to the stage of adjusting it pixel by pixel in a worrying display of Design Induced OCD.
I wanted to chat about these, I suppose just to remind everyone that us people-creatures don’t have to be pigeon holed as much as we often are. Yes I know it’s all in the same sort of area of design and creativity, but I am just one little person who happens to define herself as an illustrator of sorts. That it what I love, how I make a little moolah, and what I devote a lot of time to. But there is always room in my little noggin for different things. Things that require me to think differently and consider how I see things differently, and I think it’s pretty cool that we have the capacity to do these different things at the same time. I think that I, like so many others, can lose sight of that when life gets busy and sink back into the comfort of what I know I can do.
But I’m really starting to get into these little layout majigs. They’re challenging for a messy art bug like me, and I’ve definitely not cracked it yet, but with every new design I make, I see new promise and get joy from the structure of it all. The Organisation is SO pleasing.
I’ve literally gone from a fanatic of this:
Dave Mckean; Wolves in the Walls. A STUNNING book.
Anterograde amnesia is a form of amnestic disorder.
According to the mental health professional’s handbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders , fourth edition, text revision (2000), also known as DSM-IV-TR, it is characterised by the sufferer’s inability to retain new memories or learn new information based on experience. This would make it very difficult to use any information gained through personal experience to alter the sufferer’s actions in their future endeavours. They are, essentially, unable to learn from their past mistakes.
I’m informing you of this, very interesting and clever sounding information (that I have, just now, stolen from the internet), because I think I must have this condition. Why else would I be so, totally one hundred percent incapable? Other than the fact I am just, literally a twat.
Unlike most people of sound minds, I seem to be completely and utterly incapable of learning from my mistakes, specifically with regards to the time management of personal projects, (illustrated best by this time, this time or, indeed, this time) and taking the necessary steps in ensuring that I DON’T DO THAT AGAIN.
Case and point: I have just this week recovered after five consecutive days of sleep deprivation and manic photoshopping induced finger strain, in an attempt to knock together the four page comic I have been thinking about making for about two months. The operative word here being thinking. I have known about a competition for a four page comic for the full length of this time and for the entirety of it, have had the well-meaning intention to enter. I started of pretty well, I wrote it. Then I did the first storyboard for the first page…about a month later. Then I put it off like an absolute champ until the week before deadline.
Oh yeah, and it was postal entry so completion time was pretty crucial in order to get it there in time. Brilliant.
And thus began the next installment in the, worryingly frequent, let’s-not-sleep-for-a-few-bajillion-hours-so-we-can-finish-this-work-that-really-should-have-been-done-at-least-three-days-ago saga.
And this is what I bring you today. The fruits of my most recent labour, made much harder by my own idiocies and disregard for my poor, suffering body’s basic need for sleep.
I don’t know if it’s a form of unassuming arrogance or simply a branch of unquestionable stupidity, but it’s getting seriously ridiculous the extent of which I will leave the things I want to do in favour of doing, just about, anything else.
I managed it yes. I finished four pages of narrative and I submitted it, within the time restraints of the competition. And it’s not the worst comic ever made. But it could, and more to the point SHOULD have been better. Much better. I should have had the time to redo the first storyboard as a storyboard and not had to rework it on the final page. I should have had the time to find a font that suited the tale better than the, pretty sorry, collection I work from currently, downloaded it and implemented it. I should have had the time to rework the text so that the first page wasn’t so unbalanced in terms of the relationship between text and image (you know, kinda the most important aspect of a graphic novel.) Shoulda. Woulda. Coulda. Because I DID actually have that time. And I frittered it away baking cakes and complaining about my summer project.
And now it is done. And that means it cannot be undone, at least until Marty Mcfly realises that he definitely is wasting his time with Jennifer and is willing to spring forward to 2012 and marry me, whisking me away in our badass time machine (this will happen after he realises he’s fed up of being a fictional character and ready to take the steps into the realms of reality), at which point I can find past me and give me a good slap, shouting “DO SOME WORK NOW” in my own face.
Until that moment, I’m going to have to settle with LEARNING from what has gone before and NOT leaving everything that is not of immediate importance until it is, at which point it’s too late for it to reach it’s full potential.
Well I can dream. There’s a definite possibility here, that I am actually just doomed.
It was terrible but I did it. The Intended-for-Summer-but-Actually-only-Done-in-the-Early-Autumn-the-Night-Before-Hand-in-Project is officially handed in. It is done. Complete. Finito.
So now let’s all move on to happier times and embrace the start of a new year, banishing thoughts of irritatingly time consuming prior projects, and subsequently the guilt of not having done them, to the wind and beginning afresh.
I have a shiny, new project with lots of lovely potential and handfuls of doodles I intend to screen print, now that I, once again, have access to all the glorious facilities of institutionalised education. And boy, am I intending to make use of those. Not so much for school work obviously, that’s just not how I roll.
My desk is currently decorated with new time tables and other scraps of paper with various, scribbled information for the new year, as well as the usual half a rainforest that seems to materialise every September/October in the form of sheets and sheets of administrative information I either already know, or will never look at.
Yes, it is officially back to school time.
Let’s all celebrate with a completely unrelated drawing of a fox.
Bring on the new year! And with it, nice early bedtimes.
And thus begins my second year as a West Country bumpkin.
So far it’s been going well, with a small but successful day selling zines at the Bristol Zine Fair, as organised by the folks from The Bearpit Zines collective, and I’ve had a good few weeks of very successfully avoiding doing my summer project by getting unhealthily obsessed with cooking.
So here’s some recent doodles to direct my mind away from the ludicrous thought of beginning said “summer” project…in October…the night before I hand it in…
…okay I will get on it soon. Under the watchful eyes of the judgemental ostrich.I suspect this guy may have been behind the mysterious disappearance of the cheesecake brownies I made this week…
And finally, I was also asked recently to design a simple, cartoon plane design to go on Tshirts for the organisation “The Epiphany Project”. This simple line drawing is what I came up with.
See? It might not be for uni, but I have been doing some kind of work esque things! It’s not all been fun, games and ostriches!
Alrighty, enough internet based procrastination. I am now, really and truly, going to go and do my *ahem* early autumn project. As it shall now be known.
Sometimes really shitty things happen to really wonderful people.
And sometimes these wonderful people are incredibly close to your heart, and you cannot help but become overwhelmed with a mixture of incomprehensible hatred for the injustice they’re suffering, through absolutely no fault of their own, and utter loss for the helplessness you feel.
It’s times like these, when it’s almost laughable how little you can do, that you turn to the littlest things you can do in the hope that it may put a smile on the face of the people you love, even in their darkest hour.
And it is laughable how small this gesture is, but when you remember how much they used to light up when they spoke about their dog, you hope perhaps a little hand drawn token, to remind them of those times of giggling on the grass in the park while they spluttered with laughter through their anecdote, may bring them something. Just enough to help them forget the pain and perhaps even for a little curve of a smile to appear for a split second. Just enough to remind them of the things they love and how loved they are in the hope it will help them to stay as strong as they have been.
We are all so, so proud of you. Get well soon man, Chester’s waiting for you and those stories aren’t going to tell themselves.
I often find that the smallest, most insignificant occurrence in an ordinary day has the potential to spark whole waves of pulsing creativity inside these little human skulls, that can evolve into ideas, narratives or images that have the potential to turn into something quite special. It’s kind of the beauty of creativity; it’s incredible, organic growth from the midst of drab normality.
And then sometimes, it simply comes from seeing super cool, ultra talented people do super cool, ultra talented stuff and appealing to that most disagreeable, competitive part of you that wants to, if not beat them, at least be one of them. The Cool Kid Conundrum.
This is totally what happened to me yesterday.
I went to a talk in London’s St Albans Centre for a Comica organised event where the legendary Quentin Blake (if you don’t know his name you should be shot. And then be shown an image of his so you can go “OOOOoooh. THAT guy, yeah of course I’ve seen THAT guy!” And then, and only then, will I call you a paramedic. For the gunshot wound.) and the phenomenal Shaun Tan, a personal hero of mine and creator of beautiful graphic books like The Arrival and The Red Tree, were having a wee discussion about illustration and things.
It was a pretty awesome way to spend an evening to be honest. It’s wasn’t the most organised event in history, but was a lovely insight into the minds of two truly incredible (albeit very stylistically different) illustrators and their methods and philosophies regarding their work. They took us through a brief history of their careers, bouncing off each other in a mutual interview, before taking questions from the floor, and finally rounding up with a quick, live draw-a-thon and book signing (and Me-Oh-My did I have books so sign.)
I’m proud to say my copy is freshly signed!
And as I sat there, absorbed in the works of both of them as they scrolled through their, deservedly impressive, careers before producing some entirely new and original, flawlessly wonderful, off-the-cuff imagery, I thought to myself:
An example of Shaun Tan’s jaw dropping talent. From The Arrival, his wordless graphic novel about the loneliness and disorientation of immigration.
“Dude, you need to do more drawing.”
And I do. It may not have escaped your notice that there has been a severe lack of it recently. Now, that is, partially due to my broken scanner (BOOOO) and the fact I’ve been tied up in commission work for other people and writing etc, but really, there is no excuse not to bash out a doodle every now and then is there? I mean, it’s not exactly time-consuming. Plus it provides an excellent distraction from things I don’t want to do, like this god-forsaken summer project of mine.
So today I did The Book Look; a phrase I tend to coin whenever I’m feeling a little dry on the creative juices front and need to whack out my rather large collection of graphic novels, fanzines, children’s books and general collection of amazing talent to kick-start my own creative flow.
The result was drawings! Nothing special, nothing truly inspirational, and actually, nothing even remotely good, but drawings nonetheless! And, with my lack of scanner, I even photographed them for you JUST TO PROVE I actually did something. I do apologise for the poor quality, it’s in these times of need you truly appreciate the genius of scanning freedom, but alas. It’s dark times this end, I’m practically medieval.
(Though using photos taken in crappy light does kind of make everything look like it’s from a silent movie, which I kind of like.)
I can draw really, honest I can! But I needed to get back into the swing of things, loosen up you know? That’s what I tell myself anyway, “it’s okay, it’s just a practice…”
I did consider spending more time photoshopping these into better shape, but to be honest, I feel it would have taken away from the wholly organic, slightly shitty and very honest state of my sketchbooks. And what’s the point of even sharing rubbish doodles if I’ve cleaned them all up? Plus it’s pretty late right now and I’m sleepy.
What a gentleman. You can tell from his moustache.A Raven in a suit. At some point I’ll give him a hat.This guy is an old hash. When I was working on the research for Tick, I started drawing a lot of these diving helmets and he grew from there, to emerge now, a few years later, with a pet.A quick fantasy doodle. I find every now and then it’s essential for the soul to draw good looking ladies in obscure situations. What’s she reaching for? You’ll have to wait and see (because I’m not sure yet.)I’m quite embarrassed to have this on the internet, but this is, unfortunately, how my work begins. This is the first draft of the storyboard for my new comic I’ve been writing. I know it’s shoddy, please have faith. Somebody needs to…
Hopefully this will be the start of something beautiful. Hopefully this will get me back into the swing of things, of doodling for me and not just working on projects in sequence. I’d like to expand on a few of these, and maybe I will, but if they do just fade away, into the oblivion of forgotten sketchbook pages and nonsense spontaneity, I think that’s okay too.
But for now, in the very wise words of Mister Quentin Blake on the last page of Mister Magnolia:
Rebecca Bagley Illustration 